Perspective: Freedom best promoted by gradual illumination

Charles Darwin wrote in 1880 that freedom of thought was best illuminated by the advance of science.

That quote came to mind recently when I saw an Associated Press news story May 20 that said chimpanzees were more closely related to humans than to gorillas or other monkeys.

Apparently, they also share a common ancestor from 7 million years ago.

The study, by a team at Wayne State University in Detroit and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said humans and chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA, the molecule that determines characteristics.

So, they recommended that the two species of chimps be added to the genus Homo, where man now stands alone.

Chimps and bonobos, or pygmy chimps, are in the genus Pan.

Reclassification of chimps into the human genus would change the way anthropologists study our species, and perhaps even improve their living conditions in zoos and research labs.

After all, you won't let Dr. Gyro Gearlube stick a syringe full of research nicotine or some other drug into your Cousin Bonzo's arm, will you?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ought to jump on this.

I want to see some fur fly.

(Figuratively, of course.)

Immediately after Darwin wrote his "On the Origin of Species" in 1859, an enormous outcry arose from people who were insulted that they might be somehow connected to the chimp branch of the human family tree.

Creationism, a belief that God created Earth and its life entire at once, had been the dominant belief for millennia.

So naturally, Darwin's book was an outrage to the clergy and the fundamental congregations of all churches.

This new study could get the evolutionists and creationists at each other's throat again, heating up the debate.

I point out the AP report because the fight for scientific clarity and supremacy is not over. In fact, it's being lost in some places.

There probably won't be a circus atmosphere like the Scopes trial of 1925, or a ridiculous ban on teaching evolution like Kansas implemented.

(That state removed the ban finally after teachers, scientists and others with common sense rebelled, saying it made a mockery of the state's educational system, which it did.)

Alabama, however, continues to astound and requires stickers on biology books warning that evolution is controversial, the AP story said.

That state's governor used public money in 1996 to send a copy of Phillip Johnson's antievolutionary book, "Darwin on Trial" to every high school biology teacher in the state.

This may not be an important debate in St. Johns County, though I'm not sure what is taught here.

But the national Republican Party, trying to hold on to its conservative Christian power base, could push this issue down to local school boards. And, while our School Board is generally forward-thinking, this IS a Republican-dominated county, and things could change quickly and quietly.

I'm sure I'll be bombarded with e-mails or literature from the Institute for Creation Research in El Cajon, Calif., or the Center for Scientific Creation in Phoenix.

But I won't be a receptive audience. I've seen their stuff, and they offer lame arguments such as, "Creation and Evolution are the only valid alternative theories of origin."

Oh yeah? Give me a minute or two and I can come up with five or six more "theories."

They then outline the flaws in evolution, which scientists admit IS only a theory, meaning that the only other logical answer is creation.

It is possible that both theories are correct in some form, or that neither is correct.

But the only thing we should teach about humankind's origins are those constructions which contain real, verifiable evidence. Not evidence twisted to fit some mythological ideal or a thinly disguised religious position. Natural laws do not hold in a world ruled by the supernatural.

Evolution is only an educated guess. Not everything is understood, and there are even competing theories of evolution.

But science is the best guess we have to make sense of the natural world. Children fed a science-deficient and logic-poor diet in school will end up believing anything they are told.